By Seth Boyes,
Seth Boyes, News Editor
Word spread pretty quickly after Iowa Attorney Brenna Bird declared a February Facebook post form our county sheriff violated Iowa law, by outlining his views and expectations concerning non-judicially vetted detainers. Bird went on to file a case late last week against Winneshiek County Sheriff Dan Marx, ultimately seeking a district court’s approval to stop state funds from flowing into Winneshiek County.
You can read more about the AG’s decision elsewhere in this week’s edition, but for the purposes of this page I’ll summarize by saying Sheriff Marx felt the detainers were violations of the Fourth and Sixth Amendment — you know, protection from unreasonable search and seizure and also rights guaranteed during criminal trials — indicating he and his office wouldn’t necessarily support U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — or other federal authorities — if they were to try and use such a detainer before getting all their ducks in a row. And that’s pretty much the point where he and Bird clashed.
So now the matter will be decided by a judge — several million dollars of Winneshiek County’s state funding hinge on that decision. And it’s a decision which I imagine could take quite some time to make.
I’m not a lawyer — I don’t even play one on TV — but I’ve spent more time scribbling in a notebook while sitting in the back of a courtroom than the average bear. And in my experience, these types of cases — those in which legal folks get into the real nitty-gritty and debate the precise letter of the law — often end up falling one way or the other because of a small yet important detail. Sort of like when Wiley Coyote would try to catch that darn Roadrunner by propping up a boulder with a twig.
For example, a northwest Iowa school district was once taken to court after a private citizen took issue with potentially being charged several thousand dollars for the district to fulfill his admittedly-broad request for district emails related to the sale of a school building. The judge ruled the school was almost entirely in the right — almost. He said the school was allowed to charge reasonable fees under Iowa law, including fees to cover the cost of having the requested records reviewed by an attorney to be sure the district didn’t disclose any confidential student information. But like I said, there was a fly in the ointment. Among the thousands of dollars in fees, the school district had included contributions to IPERS while calculating the value of their employees’ time in retrieving the various records — and including IPERS as part of the cost wasn’t permitted under Iowa law. If I recall, that error only accounted for a very small percentage of the total fees the district had required before releasing the records, but the judge noted he had no legal leeway to make an acceptation, and the school lost the case.
I bring that up partly to illustrate that I don’t envy Bird’s position. She, much like Sheriff Marx, is often duty-bound to investigate valid complaints alleging violations of the law, yet neither the AG nor the sheriff are given the authority to pronounce judgement or sentencing — that’s a job for the courts (though one could easily argue Bird could have taken other steps to resolve the dispute with Marx without taking the matter all the way to district court in what seemed like something of a hurry). And sometimes even a court’s ruling is largely limited by the specific language of a given law.
Language is important with these things. And I think it’s the language in Bird’s case which might actually give this particular debate a little more elbow room.
“The sheriff knows (and) is aware that ICE detainers are not all ‘violations of our Fourth Amendment protection against warrantless search, seizure and arrest, and our Sixth Amendment right to due process,’” Bird wrote in her case last week.
Maybe that same little word stuck at you to you too, dear reader — “all.”
Those three little words have scratched against my brain at several points this week. The AG could have chosen to simply say in absolute terms that ICE detainers are not violations of those two amendments. She didn’t. She chose to say that not all of them are — in my line of work, we call that hedging our language.
And again, I’m no lawyer, but those who have passed the bar exam tend to choose their words very carefully. Bird’s addition of a qualifier in that particular phrase could be taken as an indication the AG knows or even agrees that, while not every single ICE detainer amounts to a constitutional violation, some might indeed do so, just as the sheriff said.
On top of that, some of the other documents filed by Bird’s office show Marx was already aware wrongfully detaining individuals could expose the county to other legal liabilities, and those filings show he was also aware “different federal circuit courts have addressed this issue in different ways.” Add to that the fact that Bird admits Marx has complied with all 21 detainers his office has received since November of 2018, and I’d say it’s highly unlikely our county sheriff suddenly decided to change how he and his deputies perform their duties as of Feb. 4, 2025.
Perhaps the court will see things the same way.
Agree with Seth? Think he’s got it completely backwards or he’s missed the point entirely? Let your voice be heard. Letters to the editor may be emailed to editor@decorahleader.com or dropped off at 110 Washington St. Suite 4 in Decorah.
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